Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/169

158 J. DEWEY: made in the treatment of man's nature. Psychology has to do with just the consciousness which constitutes man's ex- perience, and all further determinations of experience fall within this psychological determination of it, and are hence abstract. More definitely, Psychology, and not Logic, is the method of Philosophy. Let us deal seriatim with these two questions. i. No such distinction in the nature of man, as that in one aspect he is " part of the partial world," and hence the subject of a purely natural science, psychology, and in another the conscious subject for which all exists, the subject of philosophy, can be maintained. This is our first assertion. Let us turn again to that most lucid and comprehensive statement of philosophic doctrine by Prof. Caird, from which extract has already been made. The distinction to be upheld is that between the " sphere in which all knowledge and all objects of knowledge are con- tained" and "one particular object within this sphere". The question which at once arises is, How does this distinction come about ? Granted that it is valid, how is man known as requiring in his nature this distinction for his proper comprehension ? There is but one possible answer : it is a distinction which has arisen within and from conscious experience itself. In the course of man's realisation of the universe there is necessitated this distinction. This dis- tinction therefore falls within the sphere of psychology, and cannot be used to fix the position of psychology. Much less canpsychology be identified with some one aspect of experience which has its origin only within that experience which in its wholeness constitutes the material of psychology. The dis- tinction, as we shall immediately see, cannot be an absolute one : by no possibility or contingency can man be regarded as merely one of objects of experience ; but so far as the dis- tinction has relative validity it is a purely psychological one, originating because man in his experience, at different at- of it, finds it necessary to regard himself in two lights, in one of which he is a particular space- and time-conditioned being (we cannot say object or event) or activity, and in the other the unconditioned eternal synthesis of all. At most the distinction is only one of various stages in one and the same experience,both of which, as stages of experience one,indeed, of experience in its partiality and the other of experience in its totality fall within the science of experience, viz., psycho- logy-